Congratulations! This is a free usability
review from UsabilityInstitute.com. "Usability" refers
to how easy and effective it is to use a Web site. Although
it involves how a site looks (graphic artwork), it is primarily
concerned with how a site works, what you click on, what happens,
and whether the site does its job. Perhaps
this review is all you need to improve your site. If that's
the case, great. Please mention UsabilityInstitute.com if
you talk with others who need help with their site.

The following three sections provide a general
analysis of your website from a relatively quick review. Although
Web design is still perceived as a highly creative endeavor,
there are many aspects of it that call for standardization
and compliance with widely established conventions. Implementing
even a few of the ideas below can really improve a site.

Part
1: Content Basics

This
first section is intended for typical public web sites
(for products and corporate information), but also applies
for the most part to intranets and software applications
that run in a browser. We've been advocating many of
these ideas—in the context of general software—since
our 1997 book,
Computers Stink, but they've been beautifully
enumerated for WWW purposes in Steve Krug's book, "Don't
Make Me Think."

Students and Professional Developers: Designing a serious software application in a
browser? Don't spend time and money designing the look
and styles... there's more than you think involved!
Instead, use GenericUI,
shareware CSS and artwork that's free for non-commercial
use and indefinite trial use.

As
we read in a graphic artist's ad, "Technology makes
it work but art makes it sell," and you should take
heed. We're not graphic artists here at Uinst, but we
know good art when we see it and the common denominators
that separate good pages from bad are clear. Look at
the top sites and you'll see they spell out the following
criteria.

The three main
experties areas conflict a little with the top navigation
items. Some of the bottom panels, like Optimize Your Site,
create questions about where things go and what the relationships
are.

Do your hands ache after a day at the keyboard??? This review
sponsored by RSIRescue.com ...

Part 3: Genuine Value: Useful Content & Critical Interaction Design

And now for the hard part.
If all of good Web design were as clear-cut as parts 1 & 2,
above, you wouldn't need much judgment and there would
be a lot more good sites. But the easier the decisions
are, the less significant the thinking and effort behind
them... and the easier it would be to provide useful content.
This section is where you make or break your rapport with
the visitor. If you provide real value and give folks enough
tools to get to it, they will push past the basic omissions
and ignore even the most amateurish art.

Too much use of
clipart images. Substitute portions of your client work.

Summation & Next Steps

Overall Rating:Strives
/ Survives
/ Thrives

Hitech Solutions appears
to be new web shop, apparently with a successful inroad into
one line
of content, automobile sites. Very similar to a previous review
of CoreObjects.com, its challenges and limiting factors
lie not in usability but in
areas of marketing,
copy
writing,
graphics, and creating more compelling content. My comments are similar:
I'm not a marketing guy, but I'll offer my thoughts. In terms
of
usability,
yes
it
has a few flaws (you-are-here indicator, site map,
search, visited-link color coding) but these are all "compliance" and
convenience type issues, not structural or conceptual impediments
that
make the site ineffective to use.
One reads a few pages and gets the idea.

Recommendations:

Replace the fluffy wording with screen captures or thumbnails
of completed work (approx 12 sites?). I did not try to evaluate
the linked sites, but there might be a lot of usability issues
there. If that's what you were interested in, contact me. Make
most of your site a showcase. Consider other sites that put
all of the showcase information and screenshots in a side
panel. Find a site that has a good model and learn from it.

Show more than just home pages from your work examples.
Make the 12 auto sites look like
12
areas
of
expertise...
graphics,
hard-core
ecommerce
work, security, Flash, database coding, requirements gathering.

Cut down the predictable wording about websites. Buyers
know most of the basics. If they don't they won't read about
them... they'd need to be sold face-to-face.

Make your site simpler and address every usability item.
It has to be a model, but doesn't have to be complex or large.